Why do People keep their Social Media Accounts Private?

This is me not minding my business but for a couple of years now I couldn’t help but try to understand why people keep their social media account privates, just like every other inquiry I started by asking people around me who I noticed had their accounts private. Most times, I really didn’t get a reasonable reply, “ Because I want to”, “I don’t know”, blah blah blah, plenty masking. Some people were quite open to giving me tangible reasons, I am grateful to you all.

hehehe, I even went this far to get an expert opinion but it wasn’t among the few that was answered

After much asking and reading up stuff online I’ve come up with 4 reasons.

Pride

A high ordinate opinion of one’s own dignity, importance, merit or superiority, whether as cherished in the mind or as displayed in bearing or conduct.

The ability to decide who follows you and who doesn’t is cool, it’s like people apply to get access to view your awesomeness. It’s more like a job Interview where you get to know about the interviewee and the interviewer only reveals what he wants the interviewer to know.

Herd Instinct

I once asked a young guy whom I met and on checking his Instagram I found his account was private, so I asked him why, I even suggested that maybe he didn’t want his parents or relatives to find him but he declined the reason and attributed it to herd instinct, his peers had their accounts on private and seeing that it was the new cool decided to do same.

Herd Instinct: A situation in which people act like everyone else without considering the reason why.

Insecurity

Lack of confidence or assurance

We all face insecurities in different areas of our life, it’s a human thing. It takes confidence to share your life with the whole world — If everyone who has access to the internet can see your account then it is the whole world.

It takes confidence to think that what you share could help someone or brighten the day/night of someone else.

It takes confidence to not be bothered or that bothered to keep your account private because someone or people might not immediately or forever agree with your views and might say negative things.

It takes confidence to understand that it’s okay to share more about your life, that in doing so we give others permission to do so and we have a more sincere and authentic world.

I’d close with the words of Seth Godin and mine 🙂

Do you think we don’t need your art or are too afraid to produce it . Seth Godin

Do you think we don’t need to see your awesomeness or are you too afraid to show us. Daniel Adeyemi

Thanks to Kesi for reading the first draft of this post and making useful recommendations.